Dvaita and Sophistry - Part 3(Inherent natures of jivas)

[Shrisha Rao]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, kalyan chakravarthy wrote:

> Namaskaaram,
>
> What does Dvaita say about Mundaka Upanishad 2.2.4?

I don't know off-hand; look it up.  This is also probably off-topic for
this forum.  I am not getting the feeling that a lot of people welcome
lengthy expositions of Dvaita here, and would rather let discussion go
back to normal.  (I have already made more postings in the past few weeks
than in the preceding five years or so.)  If you wish to continue this
discussion in private or elsewhere, I would not mind that.

I will respond to your outstanding messages as of this time, but barring
other interest or responses, will not continue in this thread.

> >note, do not accept the distinction of ritualistic versus Vedantic)
> >explicitly reject Sri Sankara's explanation of `AtmA' as referring to a
> >second body; instead, the word is read as referring to
> >Chaturmukha-Brahma, who is a "second AtmA," the first being Vishnu who is
> >the primary referent for the word, and from whom Brahma gets the epithet
> >in a secondary sense (just as Vayu also is given the epithet of `Brahman'
>
> 1.Just for the sake of interest, second in what sense?

In the sense of not being equal to the first, who is sans pareil.  He
"comes second" in worth, rather than being a copy of the first.

> 2.Observe that you have said "second AtmA" and not "second to the AtmA". In
> the latter case I would agree if you say that AtmA here means Vishnu. But in
> the former case, the AtmA should refer to Chaturmukha-Brahma only. Dont you
> feel so?

The Upanishad says `me dvitIyaH' -- "my second."  I don't see that there
is much difference.

> >However, in Vedanta, important epithets like `AtmA', or even verbs like
> >`gachchhanti', do have standard meanings that do not change;
>
> As far as the word gachchhanti is concerned, the standard meaning does not
> necessarily show an eternal transit. Even in day to day usage this is true.
> ( gachchhAmi, for instance does not indicate that I am not going to come
> back.)

Everyday usage is but a very poor indicator.  It would be far more
convincing if you could gather up a corpus of evidence of `gachchhanti'
being used in the Vedantic literature (sUtra-s, BG, Upanishads) to denote
temporary transit.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

> Kalyan